After a period of silence on this site, here is a lifesign again with some updates and fresh stuff. One note on my silence first. I am writing my thesis right now and had literally no time to maintain this blog. I will try to change this for the time to come.

I would like to start with some updates for now. First of all, the subject of my thesis changed, shifting from the initial idea of researching grassroots mobile media usage and production in the struggle of marginalized people to a different theme. Thus, the title of my thesis changed from its initial proposal

Urban spatial information as commons: Potentials of mobile communication for peer based “produsage”

I will explain this switch in the next post which will be taken off one section of the thesis methodology//self-conception chapter and that is talking about my experience in São Paulo. If I look at this blogs’ content, such a switch is somehow consequential.

The aim of this paper is to give an overview about the right to the city. The right to the city is a concept that is part of the discourse about contemporary urban development with its accompanied and resulting social inequalities. It is referred to in institutional discourse on international level by UN-Habitat/UNESCO, on city level in form of statutes that intends to grant more rights to city dwellers (such as in Brazil and Mexico) but emerges also in various forms in the struggle of (urban) social movements and grassroots groups all over the world. Therefore it seems to be interesting to take a closer look to its roots that has been initially planted by the French sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre.

Due to its complexity, it is not the aim of this paper to comprehensively lay out the right to the city to its full extend and in all its possible forms and facets. The paper focus on the basic concepts and takes a further look at contemporary interpretations of scholars such as David Harvey and Manuel Castells. Hence, the right to the city is used here primarily to describe the development of the ‘capitalist city’, its negative effects for its inhabitants and the potential utopias that could be made possible, in contrast to other approaches such as the ‘creative city’ developed by urban theorists like Richard Florida.